Stanley George Hooker, 30 September 1907 - 23 May 1984

The last year of Sir Stanley Hooker’s life was a brave struggle against disease. He was determined to complete his autobiography, and in this, as in most of his enterprises, he was successful. With uncanny precision he managed to put off death until the day before the actual publication of the work under the title Not much of an engineer. The authors of the present memoir felt that there was little point in simply writing a précis of that extremely readable book. Instead, we shall concentrate on some technical matters that could not be fully covered in a book that was intended for the general reader, and also on those aspects of Sir Stanley Hooker’s work and personality that both his modesty and his occasional lack of it prevented him from directly revealing in his own book.